January 5, 1861, The New York Herald
The conservative masses of the people, North as well as South, have become fairly aroused to the conviction that, in this most critical period of our nation’s history, no remedy whatever is to be looked for from their representatives in Congress. A background of incapacity, stupidity, imbecility, gross ignorance and habitual venality only presents in stronger relief such weakness and cowardice, on the part of the majority of the members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, as has but one or two parallels in the history of constitutional governments. At a moment when the discretion, judgment, patriotism and prestige are needed of statesmen, similar to those produced by the country in the days of Washington and Jefferson, there is only to be found a desolate blank in knowledge and sagacity at the source from whence sound and healthy legislation should proceed. Each incumbent of office, North and South, for the term of two or six years, lives in deadly fear of incurring unpopularity among the populace of his own district or State and even the few who possess the ability are wanting in the moral courage, independence and freedom from local domination which are indispensable for the comprehension of these broad views of inter-State policy which must be developed to heal the present and avert the impending evils that menace the prosperity of the confederation.
Such is the humiliating prospect which greets citizens of the United States in the halls of the Capitol. If they turn their eyes to the present and incoming administrations, an equally sickening state of affairs is presented to view, without the slightest hope of remedy. The wise recommendations of Mr. Buchanan in his annual Message, and the decided stand he has taken with regard to the South Carolina Commissioners, commend themselves to the favor of the nation; but Congress burrows forward in its molehill, and refuses to adopt his suggestions, and to strengthen his hands to stay the downward descent towards disintegration and anarchy. Mr. Lincoln occupies himself with figuring out a Cabinet; and in awarding spoils he may not be permitted to distribute, while not a man of his adherents gropes at any interest beyond such as is individual, or shows an appreciation of the gravity of the momentous questions of the hour.
Yet clear, unmistakable, demonstrated, stands the inextinguishable love of five sixths of the population of the Unites States for the Union. Neither abolition fanatics and persecutors at the North, nor fire eating logocrats and mobocrats at the South, can quench the patriotic fire which was kindled during the seven years’ war that achieved our national independence. The ashes of expiring fossilism in congress cannot smother it, nor can it be extinguished by either the aggressions of South Carolinian rebels or the Faneuil Hall harangues which have provoked them to frenzy. It is the great voz populi, which will unfold blessings and unity to the confederation, and build an enduring fabric of national greatness upon the ruins of the sectional agitation which has been created by narrow minded sectional tyranny on the one hand, and undigested, crude, unconstitutional resistance of wrong on the other.
Let the people therefore, speak. Of the five millions of voters in the United States, it is within bounds to say that four millions three hundred thousand are conservative in sentiment and prepared to concede to the South their reasonable demands. A constituent convention of the Southern States is already impending. The effervescence which has resulted in mob rule, violence, the seizure of national fortresses, custom houses, post offices and arsenals in South Carolina, is generally disapproved of, even in slaveholding communities. If similar acts are committed elsewhere they will be isolated and irresponsible, and the popular voice will fail to sanction them. The general idea at the South, as is apparent from a study of the advices from the separate States, is that each aggrieved member of the confederation should secede, but that, once having passed acts of secession, they should leave relations with the federal government as they are, and have recourse to a constituent convention of the Southern States, to decide upon future definite action.
It is from such a Southern constituent convention that welfare to the Union may yet proceed. It will be assembled, necessarily, to the comparative exclusion of the small fry of mere sectional politicians and the guarantees which it asks will be sensible, reasonable, and such as must commend themselves to the common sense of the masses of the people in the Central and Western States. They will insist upon the recognition of the property rights of their citizens everywhere; upon the needful stipulations which intolerance has hitherto denied; upon full liberty to carry slaves into the common territory, and upon the recognition of universal toleration of opinion respecting slavery as a social institution in the several States of the Union. They will submit these different conditions, as amendments to the constitution, to the Northern States, earnestly inviting their acceptance of them, and assigning a period, similar in principle to that which was appointed for the ratification of the constitution of 1787, when all States which shall have agreed to them shall be considered as forming thenceforth the future United States of America.
It cannot be doubted for an instant, by those who have carefully analyzed the vote at the last Presidential election, and considered the reaction in the republican ranks which has since taken place, that the people of the North and West will respond at once to the rational requirements of their Southern fellow citizens. They will not pause in choosing between the happiness and prosperity which will flash upon the country out of concord, and the misery which perseverance in the chaotic byways of abolition would produce. But, in order to be prepared to act with the promptitude which the occasion demands, the notice of the Northern States ought to be raised now, without the procrastination of an instant, in calling for constituent State conventions by the Legislatures north of the Potomac. The propositions of the South must be submitted to the non-slaveholding States separately, and these latter should hold themselves ready to consider them. It is not an issue of parties. It is the people only, who, the voice of many waters,’must overpower and drown beneath a deluge of patriotism the anti-Union heresies which infect the republic. Let mass meetings everywhere call upon our Northern State Legislatures to summon together constituent State conventions. If New York begins, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, will speedily follow her example, and a contagion of those sentiments which lighted the fires of Bunker Hill, and stained with blood the ice blocks of the Delaware, will spread from the Atlantic shore to the log cabin of the most distant squatter in Nebraska. ‘The Union must and shall be preserved,’will be echoed and re-echoed far and near, and may even produce its rebounds in the frozen consciences of he inhabitants of Massachusetts and Vermont.
In a constituent Southern convention, and in a constituent State conventions, assembled at the call of mass meetings everywhere by our Northern State Legislatures, to consider the amendments to the constitution which the exigency of the time demands, is to be found the remedy for every evil. It is possible that States east of the Connecticut river may reject the propositions which the South presents; but if they do so let them act upon their own peril. Let them elect Garrison, Greeley or Wendell Phillips as the President of a rigid abolition republic; let them annex themselves to Canada; let them feed upon their own provincial self conceit, love for isms, hatred for everybody except themselves, and console themselves in the enjoyment of a petty, intolerant, hard bargaining, lawless, clergy-beridden nationality, with the reflection that not only the Southern, but the Middle States, are glad to get rid of them, and have regarded them as an incubus upon the Union for over a quarter of a century. Meanwhile, let the action of the Union loving States of the confederation be prompt. There is no time to be lost. With proper diligence mass meetings may initiate action on the part of all our Northern Legislatures within the present month. In February the South will be ready to present its propositions, and before the period has arrived for the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln the tempest that now threatens so menacingly may have been entirely dispelled from our political horizon.